Rob's Pile of Transformers: Manic Ramblings

Manic Ramblings and Delirous Ranting
re: "The Reformatting"
7/19/99
Well, folks, "Beast Machines" is now on its way... and the
lucky attendees of BotCon '99 got the first taste with the pilot
episode, "The Reformatting". Following is a summary (as
best as I can do from two watchings and some scribbled-in-
the-dark notes) and a review... but first, a gentle reminder.
If you're going to discuss this stuff, please use spoiler
protection. Don't post explicit info in your Subject: header,
and use spoiler space. I saw this episode knowing almost
*nothing* about it, and the experience blew me away. Be a
pal, and don't rob your fellow fans of the chance to have that
same experience.
Now then...
After some SPOILER space...
On
with
the
show!!
[also, be warned: some of the dialogue is not exact. Like I
said, I only got to see it twice, and I couldn't do my usual stop-
and-rewind thing.]
We open on a dark shot of a bizarre, Cybernetic flower...
then pull back to reveal a figure running towards the camera
from the horizon. It's Optimus Primal in his original gorilla
form, fleeing across a darkened, future-industrial landscape.
After he passes, a tank tread rather predicably squashes the
flower, as a whole army of Tankorr-style troops transforms to
robot mode and opens fire. Backed into a corner, Primal
turns to face them: "I don't know who you are, but if it's a fight
you want... Optimus, maximize!" But instead of transforming,
Primal surges with strange energy flashes instead. Realizing
he's stuck in gorilla form, he does some fancy gymnastics up
a wall along a series of projections. He hears some sort of
voice in his head, and his eyes glow briefly, directing him to
leap into a gondola-like freight car on a moving train. The
familiar voice of Rattrap tells him to beat it -- this is HIS hiding
place! But after a second RT recognizes his leader; they
quickly compare notes. The last thing either one remembers
is being on the way back from Cybertron; neither can
transform. Primal hypothesizes some virus is responsible for
both the tranforming impairment and the memory loss.
Before they can think much further, the tank troops blast
them from a nearby road. They flee with the tanks on their
tail, and Rattrap desperately shouting at his computer:
"Rattrap maximize! Rattrap maximize! Rattrap pretty-please
maximize!!" Just when it seems they're cornered, Cheetor
leaps from above, blinding the tank that has them pinned.
They flee as one of the tanks misses and destroys another
one, to Cheetor's disbelief ("You blew up your own guy! That
was ultra cold!") Primal's eyes light up again and he hears
voices, and immediately decides they should head into a
huge pit that's just opened up from all the firepower being
tossed about. "What makes you think it's any better down
there?!" Rattrap wonders. But as more tanks arrive, he
changes his mind: "I withdraw the question!" he wimpers.
The three leap into the darkness, and Act One ends...
*SPROING!* Our Heroes land on a web, and from the
shadows emerges Blackarachnia, in the same predicament
as them. Optimus says something's calling him, leading him
to each of the others... and now drawing him even further into
the depths of the planet. They all decend along one of BA's
spider lines (passing the site of a much earlier Cybertronian
civilization along the way), till BA's webbing runs dry, and they
all slip loose and fall again into the depths. This time, they
land in... nothing. There's only blackness around them.
"Ground control to Major Optimus," Rattrap says in response
to Primal's optimism, "We're in the middle of nowhere!"
Optimus is frustrated. "I will NOT give up!" he roars, hurling a
piece of junk into the darkness... and shattering it like glass.
Fire and light surge around them, till at last a gigantic Spark-
like object is revealed. Optimus identifies it as the Oracle,
"the computer which prophesied the coming of the first
Transformers to Cybertron." "At last," the computer says, "A
receptive Spark." Optimus is scanned, speaking in synch with
the computer, then enters into it the glowing computer-
sphere. "You are about to make contact with the Matrix,"
Oracle says. "The all-spark that links everything and everyone
that ever lived... or ever will live." We see an image of an
Earth-like planet getting hit with a blast of green energy (for a
split second I thought it was Jhiaxus nuking San Francisco
from the Generation 2 comic), reforming the planet into
something that could be Cybertron. "The seeds of the future
lie buried in the past. Seek balance in destiny, Optimus
Primal. Transform, and transcend..." Optimus walks out in a
pretty tough looking ape form, eliciting this comment from
Rattrap: "What in the name of [can't tell the word -- sounds
like "goona"] happened to you?" Op tells the others that they
must allow the Oracle to "reformat" them... and they do.
Cheetor's sleek, Rattrap's grungy, BA is lanky and tall,
looming over the others. Just in time, too... a squadron of
fast-moving motorcycle troops arrives just then, transforming
to attack. "How 'bout we give these new bods a test drive?"
Cheetor asks. The group shouts as one: "Maximals,
MAXIMIZE!"
And nothing happens.
"Do these upgrades come with a warranty?" Rattrap
wimpers. Optimus has a realization: "The seeds of the future
lie buried in the past... the original Transformers had to *learn*
to transform. It took discipline... purity of Spark... and years of
practice!" "We ain't GOT years!" Rattrap informs him. "Then
we'll just have to split up and work with what we've got," BA
says. RT, BA, and Cheets make handy work of some of the
cycle troops (including an awesome shot of Cheetor leaping
back and forth across a hallway, jumping from one second-
story archway to the next.... eh, ya kinda gotta see the shot to
understand. :] The troops get the drop on Op, however,
knocking him off a ledge into yet another Bottomless Pit. But
Oracle's voice sounds once again in his head: "To unleash
the beast within, you must tame the beast without." Primal is
surrounded by a bright glow that reforms his limbs and body.
"I... am... transformed!" he shouts, before flying up and
kicking much motorcycle booty. He gets two of 'em at his
mercy, and grill them: "Who are you?! Why are you attacking
us?" But at this critical moment, he lapses back into gorilla
form, and the two troops go tumbling into the abyss.
The others marvel at the transformation, and wonder what
the secret is. "I... understand!" Primal says. "Great. That
makes one of us," BA relies. Primal tells them that their
"training" begins right now, and leads them away. Meanwhile,
a computer states that Maximal energy signatures have been
detected... and Megatron's voice mutters that they've
managed to survive. We pan up what might be Megs' body...
but if so, he's like nothing we've seen before; he looks like a
giant steel-grey cylinder with a pair of eyes shrouded in the
dark. Megs then launches into a schpiel that I didn't quite
get... something about mongrel beast forms, so foul, so
organic, that he will destroy them. And the story ends... for
the moment.
"The Reformatting" was a HUGE adrenaline rush. The
audience was cheering as the show started and our heroes
appeared, oooing and ahhhhing at the tanks and cycles and
amazing stunts, laughing at Rattrap's wisecracks. The music
was a driving techno-style assault, nothing like the more
savage, tribal Beast Wars music. The backgrounds were
dark dark DARK, and positively ominous. There was some
great use of shadow -- for example, when they're rappelling
down the spider web, we see Rattrap's shadow on the wall
before we see him. And the whole show had a Terminator-
esque post-apocolypic future feel to it, something we haven't
seen much of in TFs, outside of certain Cybertron comic
issues. The show sets up many mysteries, the resolution of
which will no doubt be part of the show's on-going plot. At
the end, we viewers don't have much more idea of what's
going on than the Maximals do.
Near as I can tell, we're in a future where Megatron controls
Cybertron... completely and utterly, with armies of non-sapient
drones at his disposal. Why he would recall Optimus and
company, though, is beyond me. He seems totally
uninterested in anything organic apart from destroying it, and
if he's in charge, why would he risk setting four Maximals
loose on Cybertron? Did he have them in cold storage,
perhaps? Did he somehow zap them off the shuttle as it
returned from Earth? If not, why is *that* their last memory?
(Real world answer: it directly bridges the gap from Beast
Wars.) And why are they back in their original beast forms?
(real world answer: it makes them easily identifiable, and ties
the soon-to-be-on-Fox BW reruns into the show.)
Morphing. Eek. I know a number of Transfans were
disgruntled at the prospect of TFs morphing instead of
rearranging their parts, and I'm among them. I've never cared
much for the Japanese animation technique of "surround
with glowing light to transform". If nothing else, it's not
accurate to what the toys do. The toys will always TF by re-
arranging parts, and IMO the show characters ought to as
well. I guess this is where I draw the line at altering tradition,
then... :] I'm just hoping that Optimus's transformation wasn't
literal, but more something abstract, representing
tranformation of the Spark or some such... but given that he
changed modes like this *twice*, I'm not optimistic. But, we'll
see.
The charcters themselves seem basically unchanged.
Rattrap shines throughout the episode, spouting off plenty of
great lines. BA has a few herself, and Cheetor's his usual
ultra-gear self. On the side of the bad guys, we have... a
bunch of drones, apparently. There will be more bad-guy
(Predacon?) charcters, though, including Tankorr, the leader
of the tank drones (incidentally, Jim Byrnes -- the voice of
Inferno -- will be portraying an as-yet unknown character on
the series.) As for Megatron, if what we saw was actually
him... well, he looks like the Sogmaster. That's right, the
Sogmaster. Go back and read the ads from your G1 comics
if you don't know what I'm talking about. All we really saw of
ol' Megs was a big steel-grey tube with some wires and a pair
of eyes on top. Guess we'll have to wait till he steps into the
light... but it would seem that Megatron has undergone his
most radical transformation yet.
The show was very heavily dependent on previous
knowledge of Beast Wars. With all the talk of sparks,
maximizing, transforming, and so on, a newcomer would have
a tough time figuring out what exactly is happening.
Hopefully this won't be a problem for anyone, though, with
BW airing 4 days a week in the same timeslot as BM.
At the same time, though, the series is moving forward.
FORWARD. I jotted that word down several times as people
in the post-showing panel with the Hasbro reps asked
questions along the lines of "Will we see the Maximals going
back to retrieve the stasis pods?" and "Will there be G1
Transformers in the show?" The BM writers have taken a few
of our old, familiar characters and tossed them into an entirely
new situation. This is going to be an all-new direction, with
*new* ground to cover... and accordingly, little or no time to
rehash the past.
If BM is indeed set in a distant future, then it takes the same
ambigous leap that Beast Wars did -- skip past a whole
bunch of stuff, leaving it to the imagination. Over time, we
may find out some of what happened between the end of
"Nemesis" and the opening of "Reformatting". But don't
count on a thorough chronological account. Most of that time
-- like the gap between G1 and BW -- will be left to our
imaginations, I wager. And in a way, that's good. It leaves
tons of room for speculation, for discussion, for fanfic, for
interpretation... for other, untold stories. I find it pleasing that
we *don't* see every little thing that happens. It'd be boring,
most likely. It would detract from the focus of the story. I'd
rather see a good story with only a sketchy background,
personally, than a thorough background that limits the
options and takes up story time. The past will doubtless be
revealed bit by bit, much of it only as needed (like Protoform
X, for example. In the writers' minds, I'm sure, there WAS no
Protoform X until Season 2 rolled around.) Accordingly, I
wouldn't worry too much about whether this character will
appear or that character will be accounted for. I'm sure we
*will* get some guest appearances... but I bet it won't be for a
while, not until the show has had time to establish itself on its
own merits (just as BW didn't have Starscream as a guest
until the first season was almost over.) Obviously, it'd be nice
to know what happened to the other BW survivors, but don't
be surprised if we don't hear Rhinox and Silverbolt's names at
all; they might just be explained away with a line like "most
Maximals didn't survive the take-over." On the other hand,
don't be surprised if we *do* get precise knowledge of what
happened to them; the writers are certainly aware of BW
history, and probably know how much we fans want to know
the fates of our heroes. I suppose it depends greatly on
whether or not the Maximals can find out what's happened
since they were on the Autobot shuttle...
Well, that was more of a rant on the series than a real show
review. Ah well. Go read Chris Meadows' post if you want a
better show review -- he kicks my butt at this reviewing stuff
anyway. :]